Problematising sex : introducing sex as crime

This edited collection represents a multi-disciplinary consideration of sex as crime. The majority of the chapters build on pieces presented at a joint British Society of Criminology/British Sociological Association Conference (April 2006). The motivation for the conference ‘Sex as Crime’ was the recognition of how crimes such as sex work, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault have risen up the government agenda in recent years, for example the ‘Paying the Price’ consultation exercise on sex work in 2004 and the subsequent Coordinated Prostitution Strategy (2006), and other recent legislation around sex crimes including the Sex Offences Act 2003. We were also motivated by the need to question relationships between sex, crime and violence more generally given that this area of research within the criminological domain is often overshadowed by issues such as policing and community safety. The conference was attended by academic researchers, researchers outside of academia, policy-makers, practitioners and sex workers. As noted this book takes forward many of the key issues considered at the ‘Sex as Crime’ conference and is a social scientific, pro-feminist, gender-sensitive collection, drawing on practice, empirical research, documentary analysis and overviews of research in the areas of sex work and sexual violence. The purpose of this introduction is not to introduce specific papers (we do this in the two part introductions: ‘Part 1: Sex for Sale’ and ‘Part 2: Sex as Violence’) but rather to set the context for the collection and to highlight the originality of our approach.